View from the Wing

Marriott is sending Air France-KLM Flying Blue elite members an offer to sign up for a new Marriott Rewards account with instant gold status. The offer includes triple Flying Blue miles through June 30. Gold status should last for the first program year of enrollment.

Signing up through this offer will generate an account number right away, but the actual signup will that 3-5 days to process, and it won’t be possible to create an online account until that’s completed.

So perhaps there is a process in place for checking Flying Blue accounts against elite status, although this isn’t clear, so it remains to be seen whether anyone can use the link to sign up with Gold status.  As they say, “your mileage may vary.”

Thursday, March 27, 2008

After breakfast in the lounge we checked out (removing the 8RMB opt-out charitable donation, as I’ve noted elsewhere I take my charity seriously and make gifts on my own, and don’t participate in these sorts of arrangements; separately my understanding of the empirical research is that the corporate giving level remains the same independent of guest participation, so the contribution really amounts to a contribution to the company rather than providing incremental dollars to a charity) and left for the airport around 8:30am. Traffic was bad getting out of the city, but clear afterwards, and we pulled up at Beijing’s new Terminal 3 at about 9:30am. Cab was 103RMB.

Beijing’s new terminal is certainly impressive. It’s an architectural marvel, if a little bit sterile, and it’s opening was certainly smoother than Heathrow’s new terminal 5. And of course Beijing T3 is larger than all 5 Heathrow terminals combined.

We walked inside, found check-in pier E for Lufthansa and walked up to the First Class line. There were plenty of staff around the airport directing people and providing general assistance, as well as several announcements looping in English, to help people figure out their way around this behemoth of a terminal. Most of the airlines had only moved in the day before, so for the vast majority of people there it was their first time in the terminal.

Lufthansa staff checked our bags to Washington-Dulles, issued our boarding passes, and gave us lounge passes for the Air China first class lounge.

Stapled to the back of the passes was a map with quite clear instructions on what we needed to do – proceed forward into the terminal, down the escalator, to the train which the sign says comes every three minutes and drops you off at the E gates. Then through passport control followed by security, and you’re airside. Tons of duty free shopping and the lounges.

The Air China First Class lounge is large, like everything in this terminal. It’s airy. But it’s offerings really aren’t impressive. You’re greeted as you enter, hand over your passes, and there’s not much staff attention after that (except in the restroom). There are some (very) light refreshments. There’s wired internet only, though you can sort of pick up an unsecure wireless signal from the Cathay Pacific lounge.

There’s a buffet that looks as though it would be quite nice, but it doesn’t get set up until 11am – just a tad too late considering our 11:25am departure.

What they do have, though, is a bathroom attendant to get towels for you after you’ve used the sink.. and a small wall mounted LCD TV in the restroom as well.

I caught a glimpse of the ‘VIP rooms’ in the lounge, which I suppose are for high government officials not flying private, but it seems odd to have a first class lounge where first class passengers are not amongst the VIPs. (Yes, I know, there’s ‘special services’ all over the place that pay extra attention to VIP passengers above and beyond what first class folks receive, but this is an obvious walled-off do not enter zone inside the F lounge. Strange to me, anyway.)

Ok, I grant you most will find it crazy to fly up to Beijing to spend just one full day. But we packed a good bit in, had a nice time, so why not?

At the suggestion of Flyertalk.com member AZ Travels the World we booked a lovely and knowledgable tour guide named Alice. He had warned me that she wasn’t especially responsive to e-mail, but actually if I waited a couple of days she’d get back to me. I really do prefer to work by email rather than phone.

She called us at the hotel the night we arrived, and confirmed the time we’d be meeting in the hotel lobby. She did ask something we hadn’t discussed earlier – whether I’d have a car. I rather assumed she would! No problem, she assured, she would take care of it.

So in the morning after breakfast in the lounge we met her downstairs, she found us without difficulty.

She had brought a car and driver. That made the day more expensive, I suppose, but really quite reasonable. She said that the car would be RMB600 if we stayed in town, or RMB1000 if we also went up to the Great Wall. She charged RMB80/hr with a four hour minimum, so our 8 hour tour cost 640… and while this is China, she was a wonderful guide and I did tip her.

We started off at Tienanmen Square, then walked over to the Forbidden City.

From there we drove to Badaling to walk along the Great Wall. Then back to Beijing, driving by the Olympic stadium, for a street food market.

A very full day, I naturally bought a Mao watch (RMB40) and we ate some truly interesting street food, much of which our guide wouldn’t go near (like the grilled snake). We tried 10 different things, but didn’t go in for the scorpion…

Well that was quick, they just went back in bankruptcy on March 20th.

Joe Sharkey points to United’s statement about their partner’s collapse.

For customers who are flying on a United ticket, United will rebook them on an alternate flight where space is available, for no additional charge. For customers traveling on an Aloha ticket, United is offering discounted one-way fares through the end of April that will make it easier for them to return home.United will continue to honor reservations that AlohaPass frequent flier members have on a United flight. United will refund frequent flier miles at no additional charge to United Mileage Plus members who have an award ticket reservation on an Aloha flight.

Apparently Aloha’s cargo operation remains profitable and will continue operation, being auctioned off in April.

Update: Hawaiian is making an explicit status match offer to Aloha elites.

Delta is offering double Medallion Qualification Miles for Delta-coded flights booked at delta.com between March 31 and April 30, for travel through June 30, 2008. Registration required.

With three months to fly under this offer, (the next level of) elite status will be a gimme for many. With just 75,000 qualifying miles for top tier, and with elite qualifying miles available to high spenders on both the personal and small business co-branded American Express card, Delta right now is the easiest top tier status to obtain among major US carriers.

On the one hand, their program has gotten increasingly unfriendly. I’ve long said the only reason to focus on Delta is if you’re living in Atlanta and more or less captive. But top tier elites get many of the unfriendly fees waives (such as award redeposits). And this offer substnatially lowers the threshold for getting there.

While I’ve not been a huge fan of Delta lately, I’d rather be a Delta Platinum Medallion than a Northwest or Continental Silver…

I’ve been known to wear a discrete money belt when traveling, a regular belt with a zipper lining on the inside that lets me conceal perhaps 15 bills.

But if you really want to be sure that no one takes your stash of cash, well, this may be the most brilliant (and truly frightening) invention ever. Dirty underwear, complete with skid marks, to hide you funds.

I’m truly speechless, and yet in awe.

About 1h15m in traffic, the cab deposited us at the Westin for 118RMB. I had had a map to the hotel with the address in Chinese (which I had emailed the hotel for), but the dispatcher simply asked us our destination and communicated it to the driver and all was fine.

Upstairs to the club lounge to checkin (since Platinums have access to the lounge, they can necessarily check in there).

I had reserved the hotel on a cash and points award, US$60 + 4000 points a night. 500 point Plat amenity has already posted, along with points from two room service coffee orders, but no points for the cash portion of the rate – will have to followup.

We were informed the hotel was full (and it certainly was, with a huge American tour group of seniors) but that we had been upgraded to a suite that seemed to me something of a junior suite. They did offer to upgrade to something larger in the residences, but I was perfectly happy with what they had given us.

The lounge offers a very substantial breakfast and evening cocktails, appetizers, and desserts. There’s table service throughout for drinks as well as offers to bring things to you, but the main affair is the buffet. Some of the items were delicious, others sort of missed (the evening bagel with lox had mayonnaise instead of cream cheese on it, for instance).

The lounge had a few Americans, but seemingly mostly Chinese on business.

Club guests also receive a complimentary pressing during their stay, you just put the card that comes in your checkin folder into the laundry bag so that you aren’t charged.

The room had a bedroom, somewhat separated office area, walk-in closet area, and a large bathroom. There was a toilet room, dual sinks, shower, and beyond the shower a tub in the window with a shade that operated electronically. Toileteries were Ashford & Hall.

The lobby bar had both smoking and non-smoking, and our second evening there was a woman demonstrating martial arts and another woman offering complimentary back and shoulder massages.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Starwood property so keen on promoting “instant awards.” They have fully preprinted materials pushing the offerings, not of which represent enough value to entice me.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Bangkok, Thailand (BKK) to Beijing, China (PEK)
11:05 am Thai Airways 0614, Boeing 747, First Class, Seats 2J, 2K
Scheduled flight time: 4h 25m

We left the Novotel around 7:45am and took the shuttle over to the airport. Another couple was on the shuttle with us, heading to a domestic destination, so we were both dropped off at the same point – Royal First/Royal Silk checkin comes first, right before domestic.

We got out of the shuttle, had only our carryons, so none of the porters stirred.

We approached the Royal First check-in room and as soon as we entered we were greeted and brought inside to sit down.

We turned over our passports, paid our departure tax (they dispatched a staff member to pay it and brought us our receipts), and gave us our boarding passes. Then they walked us – pulling our carryons for us — through first class immigration (no line, right next to business class immigration, no line). Right on the other side of immigration was a golf cart waiting for us, ready to drive us to the Royal First lounge.

Now, a recent poster on Flyertalk described this part as especially decadent. The drive can’t be more than several hundred meters. They drive you through the business class lounge to get to the first class lounge, where they deliver you to lounge attendants who help you find a place to get comfortable.

Food is on offer. There’s an attended room with the various selections, much of which is made to order. You point at the items you’d like, and they’re brought to you in courses.

After some breakfast (absolutely wonderful shrimp wonton soup, by the way, perhaps my wife’s Taronga Zoo theory at work) we let the lounge attendants know that we’d like to visit the spa. We hadn’t pre-booked anything earlier in the morning, but fortunately that wasn’t a problem. It was 8:45am at this point, 2 ½ hours until our flight, so that was plenty of time for the full spa massage offering. It’s a 60-minute massage, but with a brief wait for the treatment, a shower, and relaxing over a cup of tea afterwards it’s best to leave an hour and a half for it.

After our treatments we returned to the lounge, checked our email, and the staff came over to bring us to our flight. Outside the lounge we were escorted through security, and then a golf cart was again waiting for us to whisk us (and another passenger) to the plane.

I realized that this was the second out of five flights so far this trip that I had never even looked to see what our gate was…

Load for the flight was 4 out of 12 seats in this old-configuration 747. No seat power (again, contra seat guru although I haven’t checked if my prodding has finally caused them to correct this). Old yet comfortable seats. Video isn’t on-demand, and (as I already knew) contra-Seat Guru there’s no seat power.

Still, this was one of the best flights I’ve ever had.

We started with a little pre-departure Dom and hot towels.

I’ve gotten incredibly used to indifferent service from Thai. I know that some people say they’ve had wonderful service on TG and they’re impressed, but with admittedly fewer than a dozen flights over the past couple years in premium classes I had yet to see it.

But this time, we had a true gem of a FA who made the flight absolutely wonderful, and the food was far better than anything I’ve had on Thai before too.

Amenity kits and menus were passed out. The FA knew that I had pre-ordered the Lobster Pad Thai.

The highlight of the meal had to be the cheese course. One cheese was the best I’ve ever tasted, a combination of a triple cream and a center filled with truffle butter. We’re now on a mission to find a cheese like it at our local cheese shops in DC.

Arrival in Beijing was on-time.

This was the last day that a large number of airlines would be housed in the old Terminal 2, and the place was even more barren than usual. Just a couple of women hawking local SIM cards on the way to immigration. We were through quickly, though bags took awhile to come out. First and business bags were on the carousel at the start, we walked out the customs hall and over to the taxis for a cab to our hotel.

bmi is gloating over British Airways’ problems with the new Terminal 5 at London-Heathrow.

bmi, London Heathrow’s second largest airline, is continuing to operate all flights as scheduled from its main hub at Terminal 1 despite disruption at the newly-opened Terminal 5.

Problems at Terminal 5, which opened to passengers yesterday (Thursday 27 March), have resulted in significant delay and disruption to BA flights operating from the new facility. In contrast Terminal 1, which now has 40 per cent less passengers to accommodate following BA’s move to Terminal 5, is running like clockwork as is bmi, the principal competitor to BA at Heathrow.

New bmi Diamond Club members receive 4,500 miles just for enrolling. That’s enough for a one-way flight within the U.K. or betweek the U.K. and Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, or Switzerland.

More importantly, bmi miles should be saved and savored, for use with their cash and points award chart and redeemed for premium class international travel on their Star Alliance partners.

Oh, and bmi is the only airline outside of North America with a regular status match program as well…

Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport

With the time change it was about 9pm local time when we got out of the BKK airport. We were heading back to the airport for a morning flight, wanted to get there early enough for the first class spa, and so decided not to head into the city and instead spend the night at the Novotel on the airport grounds.

While the in-room materials describe the walkway from the terminal, that isn’t built yet. Instead there’s a shuttle that runs every 15 minutes. After clearing immigration and customs, there’s a Novotel representative standing by door 4 ready to assist you into the hotel’s van. A quick loop around the airport access roads and you’re at the hotel.

Contra several reports, check-in was a breeze although there were curiously many forms to sign, including one for expedited checkout so I could just drop my key off n the morning and go. Although when I tried to do this they again wanted me to sign several forms. This wasn’t as easy as it should have been!

Still, it’s a nice enough hotel and right at the airport, an A+ for an airport hotel (certainly compared to the others close by, and given my desire to risk any morning traffic) although impossibly expensive for BKK… ~ US$150++ which would buy something much nicer downtown or near the river..

Next up: best flight of the trip, TG F BKK-PEK, and quite frankly this came as a real surprise to me because I haven’t been that impressed with TG’s premium cabins in the past.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Checked out in the club lounge, and the hotel car was ready for us this time with our bags ready to load into it. A quick drive over to the airport and airport porter’s met us at the curb (there’s very few as aggressive in Bali in search of tips).

This is one of those ‘failure of the last mile’ sorts of moments. The club lounge experience at the Intercontinental Bali – small issues aside – really is quite sublime. They provide you with complimentary transportation back to the airport. I understand they may not be able to leave the vehicle on the curb and come inside, but it seems easy enough to provide an extra staff member who could help you with your bags, through security, and to the checkin gates. Just a suggestion, I guess.

Denpasar Bali, Indonesia (DPS) to Bangkok, Thailand (BKK)
5:20 pm Thai Airways 432, Airbus A330-300, Business Class, Seats 11J/11K
Scheduled flight time: 4h 15m

The Denpasar airport has baggage screening immediately as you enter. Once through with your checked bags, you head to the checkin lines. There were makeshift signs indicating Thai Airways checkin, with a single line for business class. After a couple folks were checked in ahead of us, we were processed rather quickly and given lounge invitations. The passes specifically mentioned the Parai Cyber Lounge which is the nearest to gate 8 which is used by Thai, but I believe you can use the Garuda Indonesia lounge as well (confirmed by the lounge attendant there).

No doubt the Garuda lounge would be nicer. The Parai Cyber Lounge appears to advertise itself to any travelers willing to pay a fee, though it was deserted except for another couple on our flight. It has a smoking lounge outdoors, a couple of computers, and wireless internet that requires a password. Rather than writing it down, a gentleman came over to whisper it to me. Very sparse buffet which appeared to have been sitting out longer than I wanted to know. But it was close by the gate…

The flight itself was rather unremarkable, with what I’ve come to regard as rather typical Thai matronly service. Still, a short regional business class flight offered a full enough meal service and amenity kits. The ancient seats on the A330-300 were fairly uncomfortable.

And another instance where SeatGuru doesn’t know what it’s talking about (I’ve found too many of these the past year or so), the plane has empower rather than direct seat power.

Landing at Bangkok was on-time, but we didn’t have a gate and were bussed to the terminal. The wait wasn’t long, though, and we were quickly through immigration. (The last two times I was here I had transit immigration with no line and first class immigration, so this was my first time using the regular line at Suvarnabhumi.

Ok, I’ll just have to call the next part… “One Night in Bangkok.”

One of my pet peeves with travel is the last day in a resort destination. If your flight leaves too early, it’s a hectic morning rushing to get things together and get off to the airport… defeating the very relaxation you’ve been trying to accomplish. But a flight departing in the afternoon inevitably means waiting around and pining, “we have only X hours left” rather than relaxing. So I’ve found it’s helpful when taking a late afternoon flight to book activities during the day.

We decided to book a cooking class over at the Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay roughly next door to the Intercontinental. Monday morning is the Balinese cooking class (other days feature different cuisines, but when in Bali…)

The day started off at 8am in the lobby of the Four Seasons. We took a cab over, INR20,000. Cost for the class was US$90pp.

The class is taught by the hotel’s sous chef, and staff first take you to a local market to see all of the local vegetables, and the local fresh fish catch. Naturally water bottles and cold towels are provided for this lttle hour-long excursion five minutes down the road.

Back at the hotel golf carts take you down to the cooking school kitchen and dining room for a light breakfast, and class begins. It’s hands-on, everyone cooks most everything on the menu for the day, but all the preparation has already been done. Staff provide you pre-measured ingredients for each dish, and clean your station for you.

We made Balinese chicken satay, pickled vegetables, grilled red snapper wrapped in banana leaf and a Balinese pumpkin dessert.

Then it was back to the hotel to pack and off to the airport.

We had one dinner off-property. With the suggestion of some on Flyertalk, we sought out the most acclaimed restaurant in Bali … Mozaic. It’s in Ubud, and nearly an hour and a half’s drive each way from our hotel, but was a nice experience. On the whole a lovely dinner, with wonderful service (though in a very practiced, memorized Balinese way).

An advance booking is pretty much required, and then the restaurant requires same-day confirmation (and they also maintain a waitlist) so we had the club lounge staff ring them up the morning of our reservation.

And then rather than taking a cab up to Ubud we had a hotel car drive us there, wait, and drive us back. It’s just so impossibly inexpensive (even with the current value of the dollar, and even at a resort) that this sort of luxury ran less than US$50 roundtrip.

Meanwhile, the restaurant offers two different set six course menus and a ‘surprise’ menu where you let them know any preferences and they’ll prepare a variety of items for you, either the same for each person at the table or different. We opted for the surprise menu, and something different for each of us. We only traded dishes once (I don’t like goat cheese but mrs. gleff is rather partial to it).

On the advice of several Flyertalkers, we booked a tour with Wayan Sueta (who has a very nice website).

We had him take us up to the Central Mountain region, saw a coffee plantation up in Munduk, and naturally some temples.

Here was another glitch in our trip. We had booked him for March 21, we were supposed to meet him in the hotel lobby (and I had re-confirmed just days before). He didn’t show. I called him on his cell and it seems that he had gotten confused. He knew I had booked the 21st, but wrote it in his calendar for the 22nd. Since he lives up in Ubud it was really too late to get started for the day. Not a huge deal, we just rescheduled a spa appointment and agreed to meet up on the 22nd instead.

Wayan Sueta is an incredibly friendly gentleman with outstanding English skills. His jeep wasn’t great, with vinyl seats it’s quite hot! And his windshield wipers weren’t working properly. It was raining heavily on the way back to our hotel and he kept having to pull over to yank on them to try to get them going again. But he was wonderful to work with, since he didn’t take you anywhere you didn’t want to go… didn’t push shopping for commissions.

We landed just after 9:30 pm, and I expected the hotel to meet us on the walk from the plane to immigration, apply for our visa on arrival, escort us to their lounge, take our passport and luggage tags, and collect our bags. But there was no one waiting.

Now, the above service is a published benefit of a club booking at the Intercontinental in Jimbaran Bay. And there really shouldn’t have been any confusion.

Back on January 17th – right after I made the booking — I emailed my flight arrival information to the hotel.

On January 18th the hotel confirmed

Quote:

I’m paranoid, so again on March 11th I reconfirmed my flight arrival information.

That same day the hotel confirmed

Quote:

But no one met us. We took care of our visa on arrival, collected our bags, paid a porter to assist us and found someone to help contact the Intercontinental. At the airport I was shown the hotel’s arrivals sheet with no flight information down for me and I was told that “if I had only told the hotel my flight information someone would have been there” to meet me.

Instead of a leisurely and stress-free arrival after 36 hours of travel, we had the stress of figuring out our details on our own. (Ok, whoa is me, but still.)

We waited outside while the property found an older van to bring us to the hotel. Things weren’t starting smoothly at all.

Next problem… my room upgrade

On January 18th I emailed the hotel to learn what I might expect as a Royal Ambassador member in terms of an upgrade.

On January 21st I received a reply “we are pleased to inform as you are Royal Ambassador member we will upgrade to our Balinese suite which is 2 next level category from club room.”

See, this hotel is sometimes known to upgrade a single room category for both Ambassadors and Royal Ambassadors, to a Club Duplex Suite. I emailed in hopes of securing something a little better, and they delivered!

But when I arrived at checkin my room card had a room number whited out and a new room written in. I asked what kind of room I had been given – this could be very good or very bad, I figured — and I was informed that I was ‘given an upgrade’ to… a Duplex Suite.

I showed them the written correspondence from the hotel confirming me into a Balinese Suite (I get everything in writing… and I bring it with me… just in case.). They were a bit stunned and shell-shocked, didn’t know what to do. It was late at night, a bit of running around to get ahold of a sufficiently empowered manager I suppose. There were no available Balinese suites so I was upgraded 2 further categories to a Jimbaran Bay Suite. Checkin took 45 minutes, though.

The room had a bedroom, sitting room, master bath with separate shower, jacuzzi tub, toilet room, and dual sinks (toileteries were Aveda). There’s a guest bath, living room, dining room, and small complete kitchen (with separate butler’s entrance). The balcony stretches the entire length of the room with three separate sitting areas and looks out over the Bay.

There was a bowl of fruit and wooden box of extensive (36 IIRC) chocolate truffles, along with a bottle of wine, waiting for us in the room.

There were two minibars, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. Plenty of waters (refreshed several times throughout the day) in box minibars, in the bedroom and the bathroom. But the liquor was entirely removed from both minibars, with empty spaces where the bottles previously had been. I didn’t press for a refill of the half-empty mini-bar. Some hotels really don’t like the Royal Ambassador free mini-bar drinks benefit, the Intercontinental Bangkok did this to me a couple of years ago as well.

In-room internet is available wired and wirelessly, for a fee but with a twist. They have several different price points and 24 hours amounted to ~ US$20. The twist is that this was 24 hours of actual use so it was well more than enough for my five night stay. Even with a wireless router plugged into the wired connection, their password system was pretty clever and two people could not both be online at the same time with the same password.

The hotel has the best club lounge of any Intercontinental, anyhere. There’s an extensive breakfast, afternoon tea, evening h’or dourves, and nighttime snacks. In addition the lounge is open 24 hours and has a menu to order off of all day long (six items, changes daily). All complimentary. It amounts, if you want it to, to full board.

And breakfast can actually be taken elsewhere as well, in any of three other locations including the main buffet restaurant and beside the club pool. We tried the main restaurant one morning, but actually left our mostly uneaten plates and retreated back to the club lounge. The main restaurant, trafficked by guests from throughout the hotel, was just too busy. And too loud (with live music, too early for me before I’ve had my coffee) and really not that much more extensive a selection. I far preferred the service and ambiance of the club lounge, whether seated inside or outside.

It’s worth noting that the hotel is really 3 hotels in one, a main hotel… the upscale Sinjara Wing, and the deluxe Club section. I much prefer the more exclusive and quiet club section to mixing with the rest of the hotel which feels like a huge uber resort (which it is, though they pull it off well).

So I was ensconced in an absolutely wonderful suite, but I was still miffed about the airport pickup incident. I had mentioned it at checkin and all they gave me was an apology and a “thank you for letting us know, we’ll make sure this doesn’t happen to any future guests.”

I realized that at that hour no one was apparently empowered to fix anything on the spot, which really is something that the hotel could improve upon. I asked to me contacted by a manager the next day.

The next day, though, we went for afternoon tea in the lounge and the club manager approached me. She explained that they had just switched over to Opera several days prior and some data was lost in the conversion, including my airport pickup info. She gave me what amounted to $240 in spa credit as an apology. That worked. Spa was lovely. ~ US$50++ per person per hour for treatments, which is quite good for a top resort (though impossibly expensive for Indonesia of course).

I still think my all-time favorite overall spa facility belongs to the Sheraton in Pattaya. And the treatment rooms were probably a little nicer at the Le Meridien in Khao Lak. But overall, just outstanding. And those two spas are wonderful places to be compared to!

We had a couple of treatments during our trip, one comped because of the mixup with our arrival.

So, why did I choose this property and how did I pay for it?

Sure, I’m a Royal Ambassador but I might well have stayed at the Sheraton in Nusa Dua.

Well, I redeemed a bunch of Priority Club points back in December for Any Hotel, Anytime cards. I used a free weekend night certificate (the one that comes with the Ambassador and Royal Ambassador kits) and I paid for the rest with the pre-paid Amex hotel gift cards. At the 50% off redemption rate offered in December, a paid stay with these cards amounted to fewer points than an award. Plus you could book a club room (this hotel doesn’t generally upgrade to the club) and be upgraded from there. So, a great leveraged use of points.

But use of the points -> Any Hotel, Anytime cards aside, this hotel is well worth $279/night for club room. I definitely prefer a club room + upgrade here over an entry-level room at the nearby Four Seasons (pictures of which later, similar nights asking US$630).

Lots of new fees in the airline industry, limited only by the creativity of the folks coming up with them.  United, USAirways, Delta, and Northwest now have $25 fees for second checked bags, with various exemptions for various passengers. None of this is big news, it’s been written about ad naseum elsewhere.

I’ve offered detailed explanations of the economics and motivations behind tacking on fees rather than straightforwardly increasing prices. For example here, here, here, and here.

But a new Flyertalk thread yesterday shows Delta raising the ante to a new level.

CRC one-visit pass to go from $25 to $30
Unaccompanied Minor fee to go from $50 nonstop/$100 connecting to $100 for all
Pets in cabin fee from $75 to $100
Pets as checked luggage to go from $150 to $200
Curbside checked bags as per other threads ($3 vs. free, exemptions include medallions, premium cabin, etc.)
Oversize bag fee from $100 to $150, I believe as discussed elsewhere
Direct Ticketing Charge goes from $20 to $25
“ASC” for reissues, etc of non-refundable tix goes from $75 to $100 (only for tickets originally issued after 4/1)
Award ticket re-issues and redeposits go from $75 to $100, with PM waiver still in place

And the most “industry leading” revolutionary change
“Handling charge” for any award that includes a segment on another airline: $25

Many of the changes are detailed here.

The handling charge for including another airline in an itinerary (which in many cases must be done by phone, incurring a phone charge as well and precluding placing the award on hold prior to ticketing) is another example of how Delta Skymiles has become perhaps the least consumer-friendly and worthwhile mileage program of any major airline in the United States — displacing Continental to be sure.

Update: One Mile at a Time points out that - except for the charge for including a partner airline on an award - these fees are in line with what United charges for the same thing. They are still price increases to Delta customers, of course. But the really annoying one is, indeed, the new fee to use your miles.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

We arrived at Singapore’s Terminal 2, and the Lufthansa arrival gate was right next to our Singapore Airlines Denpasar flight’s departure gate. We went to the Silverkris lounge in Terminal 2, alas the business class side since we were connecting to a 2-cabin Singapore Airlines flight. 

I heard my name paged over the loudspeaker, and I went to the service desk just inside the First Class section of the lounge. It seems that I had left a DVD on the Lufthansa flight. The Lufthansa staff offered to bring it to the lounge, but since we’d be departing for Bali around the same time that the Lufthansa plane made its way onward to Jakarta, I just met them back at the gate prior to departure. But for us, Lufthansa had certainly redeemed itself from an otherwise unspectacular First Class flight.

Singapore (SIN) to Denpasar Bali, Indonesia (DPS)
7:00 pm Singapore Airlines 0948, Boeing 777-200, Business Class
Seats 16H, 16K
Scheduled flight time: 2h 30m

There’s not a whole lot to relay about this short regional flight, except that the Singapore Flight Attendants are regimented, efficient, yet still friendly and thoughtful… even in business.

I pre-ordered the Lobster Thermidor. Lovely meal service, capped off by a cup of ice cream at the end, and we were in Denpasar in no time.

The avocado and scallops salad was outstanding, I really loved the dressing.

Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) to Singapore, Singapore (SIN)
10:10 pm Lufthansa 0778, Boeing 747, First Class, Seats 81C, 81A
Scheduled flight time: 11h 45m

Our Mercedes van arrived planeside, up a staircase into the terminal and down the jetway where we were handed over to the FAs and led upstairs once again to the upper deck of a 747. And once again to my pre-selected bulkhead seats.

This time the load was 8 out of 16, so 6 other people instead of just two. And the FAs, which weren’t all that memorable on the first segment, were downright disappointing on this one (with one redeeming piece of assistance, in a moment).

Service was rushed. Now, it’s a 10pm departure so passengers may want to sleep. But I’ll let them know when I want their “Dreamer’s Delight” quick service or if I want the full meal presentation…(and, for that matter, — not to be a first class snob but also when I’d like to take it as well). We started our meal shortly after reaching cruising altitude

The flight attendant bringing us our meal kept wanting to serve what I preferred as multiple courses at the same time

She insisted that we should take our appetizers along with our caviar service (on the previous flight, each appetizer was served one-by-one.. on the next LH segment we got the three-tiered tray, but I really didn’t want all together with the caviar!). I politely but firmly insisted that she slow things down a bit. Then she wanted to serve us both our cheese and our dessert at the same time, I asked again to finish my cheese before she brought dessert.

The featured chef was Marcello Fabbri. Dreamer’s Delight menu was Tuna with Curry Dressing and Vegetable Salad accompanied by Goat Cheese Terrine with truffled Zuchini Salad or Eggplanet coated Saddle of Veal with Balsamico Stock and braised Iceberg Lettuce.

Over dinner I read the latest Inside Flyer (a few weeks late) and learned that you can redeem 4,000 Choice Privileges points for an AARP membership. Not the best rate of return on a redemption, perhaps, but maybe time to check who still offers senior discounts and what their requirement are…

Incidentally, the crew never gave us our dinner roses. Though it’s possible they were saving the roses for another passenger, across the aisle in 81K. Shortly after midnight Frankfurt time they came over to wish him a happy birthday and they presented him a handful of roses. A nice touch for him, but we never got even one…

It was somewhat difficult finding the FAs during flight to get more water. There wasn’t any on the drink cart, and there weren’t any FAs upstairs in the galley. mrs. gleff actually went downstairs to find someone.

I did, however, get 6 hours of sleep so the flight really wasn’t so bad. Again, I woke up for breakfast prior to landing in Singapore the next day shortly before 5pm.

First Class Terminal

For those who haven’t been, or might be visiting for the first time, the First Class Terminal is on the upper, departure level in a separate building, just west of Terminal 1. The building has a large “First Class Terminal” sign. There’s a pretty sharp turn-off, though, as you approach, which can be easy to miss. (It’s also walkable back from the Terminal 1 arrivals level where the hotel vans pickup and dropoff.)

Our car pulled up and a personal assistant met us out front. She asked for our passports, and I handed them over along with our boarding passes. She asked about luggage to check and I noted that our bags were already checked. She took our bag tags in order to check on them.

We were quickly through a perfectly pleasant and polite security screening, with no line of course.

Once we had our seats over in the far left hand side of the terminal, our PA came over to check on us and return our boarding passes in a proper First Class folder (something they didn’t have any of at Dulles).

I actually did have a matter for her to help sort out.

When playing around with various award flight options, our tickets were done correctly and our itinerary displayed correctly on the United website. Naturally, though, I called each of the operating carriers to get their record locators and request seats (and in the case of Singapore and Thai, to pre-order meals). When I looked up my Lufthansa record online at checkmytrip.com, I saw that there were extra segments!

Lufthansa telephone reservations told me they couldn’t make changes, as it was a United mileage booking, but that I was fine for travel. The extra segments worried me, though, because I would wind up no-showing one of them during travel and I was afraid Lufthansa would cancel the rest of the itinerary. But United couldn’t even see the segments were there. Others have had a similar problem when United reserves and then cancels segments, and one person mentioned on Flyertalk having United and Lufthansa conference each other. But somehow I just didn’t trust United to get it right, I was afraid that in the end they’d cancel the wrong segments and they wouldn’t be able to restore them, so…

I decided to wait until the First Class Terminal in order to get things in order. I showed her a copy of my Lufthansa reservation from checkmytrip, and I marked off the segments I wanted her to cancel. She understood, went away briefly, and confirmed that it was taken care of. I went online and checked and sure enough my itinerary was in proper order.

One note about internet, I do find it odd that the Lufthansa First Class Terminal has a pay internet connection for which you must get a username and password from the attendant in order to avoid paying. It seems like they could manage to have the internet in this terminal simply free. They’ll give you as many passes as you need, but some are one hour and some two hours and when you have five hours to spend here…!

Also of note is that the power outlets are European only. They may well have adapters, I didn’t ask since I carry my own, but again for a 5-hour visit… It would seem to be not that difficult to make various plug configurations possible.

We relaxed, had some refreshments, and checked our e-mail while munching on absolutely delicious nuts. Then we went into the restaurant and had the most wonderful – amazing, even — wienerschnitzel.

My wife has what she called her “Taronga Zoo theory.” A few years back when we were in Sydney we had fish ‘n chips as a snack at the Taronga Zoo. It was really good. We mentioned it later that day to my family in Sydney and they were aghast. To them that was the worst possible place to get fish ‘n chips, of course. But to us – to our American standards, which are much beneath Aussies’ on this subject – it was amazing. Even the worst Fish ‘n Chips in the country, at the Taronga Zoo, is likely to be better than what we’re used to at home. And so it was with wienerschnitzel, which at the First Class Terminal in Frankfurt, Germany would almost have to be better than anything we’d get at home in DC.

First Class Terminal Menu

Sit down service

Buffet

Quote:

After that it was back online and the occasional snack from the buffet.

I had some calls to make, and needed to check my voicemail, so it’s worth noting that this was my first trip using an international sim card (09 mobile) and callbackworld. 

As many folks know, the cheapest option is usually to pick up a local sim card. I hate this though as I wind up with too many sim cards, all with some money remaining at the end of a trip. And I’m not usually going to the same destination with enough regularity. So this is a pretty good option. 09 mobile from Iceland has pretty good rates and most importantly free incoming calls in 90 countries.

Paired with a callback service, you can make outgoing calls at the incoming call rate and pay only the callback service charge. From Frankfurt it’s less than 9 cents a minute from my cell phone to the U.S., which is really great in that I can avoid the hassle of a local SIM.

This functions as a ‘double callback’ which can take some getting used to. You dial the callback service, the call ‘fails’ and then 09 mobile calls you back. You pick up and you’re connected to your call with the callback service. That rings once, you hang up, and the callback service calls you back! Then you dial the number you’re trying to reach somewhere in the world.

There are simpler ways to do it, of course. You can trigger the callback service call from another phone, and since you’re not actually waiting for anyone to answer the call is free even from a regular US cell phone. Or you can trigger the callback directly with the number you’re trying to reach via the web.

It’s actually easier than it sounds, it’s all pretty straightforward after the first or second try.

At about 9:45pm our personal assistant – the same one who greeted us 5 hours earlier – came to collect us and brought us downstairs to their personalized immigration processing (it’s easy to forget that they never gave you back your passport when you arrived, you g